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University of Cyprus

University of Cyprus

10 Projects, page 1 of 2
  • Funder: French National Research Agency (ANR) Project Code: ANR-23-MRS1-0001
    Funder Contribution: 34,357.6 EUR

    The DisRUPT Me (Digital Skills and Research for Urban Planning Through Metaverse) Doctoral Network will train early-stage researchers in developing integrated human-centric digital twins of smart cities’ infrastructures, processes and stakeholders, and their applications to reaching the net zero goal in all major urban activities (including mobility, energy, safety and waste management). Digital Twins are virtual models designed to reflect real world entities and to be used in simulations, visualizations, and data-driven diagnoses to optimize those entities. Smart cities operate on large, time-varying, and heterogeneous data, in records of processes and human interventions, through distributed sensors and actuators connected in real environments via the Internet of Things. This opens the way to the mining of Digital Twins that are amenable to simulation-based prediction and what-if scenarios exploration, as well as Artificial Intelligence-based system diagnosis, multi-objective/criteria optimizations, and real-time monitoring and control. These models can interact with public decision-makers as well as private operators and citizens through Metaverse-based human-digital interfaces, thus allowing human-centric immersive experience, improved engagement and better perception and management of the urban issues. The Digital Twin research area consists in formalizing and developing such integrated infrastructures, and regularly updating them with data continuously collected. The DiSRUPT Me environment is intersectoral, interdisciplinary and international as it implies associating researchers in engineering sciences, and engaging researchers in social and human sciences, as well as business players, with willingness to consider the multi-sectoral effects of public policies on territories and populations in a globalized context. DisRUPT Me aims to create a doctorate programme that offers an access to a variety of facilities, ensures the career development of young researchers and exchanges on a European level. It has 5 beneficiaries, recruiting 10 PhD students who will cross-fertilize with nationally/locally-launched Digital Twin programs in which the consortium partners are all currently engaged in order to turn their campuses into living laboratories and incubators for developing, testing, validating and disseminating new ways to address major environmental, social and economic transition issues. Researchers trained in the DiSRUPT Me network will have a unique combination of interdisciplinary skills provided by the domain-specific expertise of the project partners, highly enhancing their employability both in the public and the private sectors. The interdisciplinary and well-balanced skills learned will be transferable, and the network will promote gender balance, ensure equal training opportunities, and encourage the involvement of women in science. It will also allow mutualizing partners’ knowledge, skills, and research outcomes contributing to scientific advances on an emerging and yet to-be-well-established technological area. By providing a risk-free testing environment for simulating alternative policies to improve city management, the efforts in the DiSRUPT Me network will allow public authorities reveal policies that underperform and identify leverage points for interventions that may succeed, thus significantly saving cost. Moreover, since the solutions defined will be open to the ecosystem, they will help citizens experience public services better and faster, while companies will have a perfect sandbox to experiment the development of new services and business models.

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  • Funder: French National Research Agency (ANR) Project Code: ANR-17-JPCH-0004
    Funder Contribution: 249,861 EUR
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  • Funder: French National Research Agency (ANR) Project Code: ANR-15-NMED-0009
    Funder Contribution: 137,608 EUR
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  • Funder: French National Research Agency (ANR) Project Code: ANR-18-MRS1-0012
    Funder Contribution: 29,160 EUR

    The increasing urbanization and motorization overcrowds cities with vehicles, causing traffic congestion with severe societal, economic, and environmental consequences. To alleviate congestion, currently deployed solutions utilize the limited number of available information sources deployed in the infrastructure to provide centralized solutions for road transportation systems (RTS). The emergence of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) into RTS (e.g. communication, sensing, positioning), promises the transformation of RTS into a fully connected world that allows seamless information exchange at an unprecedented scale and unlocks exciting opportunities. Nonetheless, the highly challenging nature of RTS (large-scale, dynamic and uncertain nature) combined with the expected explosion of data emanating from the Connected RTS (CRTS) environment, make the use of centralized processes intractable. This calls for a paradigm shift towards novel architectures, data analysis tools and control algorithms that enable real-time, fine-grained and distributed monitoring and control of CRTS. Within this scope, the proposed European Training Network (ETN), AgileWorld, aims to equip fifteen Early Stage Researchers with the theoretical and practical scientific competences, as well as transferable, innovation and entrepreneurial skills necessary for thriving careers in the burgeoning area of CRTS that underpins innovative technological interdisciplinary development, something not offered by existing EU research or training programmes. Towards this direction, AgileWorld ETN will build upon a network of internationally renowned academic and industrial experts in leading European organizations to provide a holistic research and training program to the early stage researchers, with focus towards practical case studies. AgileWorld will foster synergies between partners to allow cross-discipline and cross-partner training through targeted secondments at the ETN’s academic/non-academic partners. The MRSEI funding will serve to consolidate and to structure the porposal coordinated by a French university.

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  • Funder: French National Research Agency (ANR) Project Code: ANR-18-IC4W-0005
    Funder Contribution: 249,992 EUR

    "In 2015, over 300 million tons of plastic were estimated to be produced worldwide. It is nowadays widely acknowledged that a proportion of this plastic reaches the aquatic environment in the form of plastic debris of various sizes. While Rochman et al., in the journal Nature, suggested to ""classify plastic waste as hazardous"", the scope of the impact of plastic debris on the aquatic environment and human health remains largely unknown. Despite being the least studied aspect of plastic debris in the environment, nano-size plastic is potentially the most hazardous. One significant source of micro and nanoplastics (MNPs) generated in industrialised countries is municipal wastewater sludge and effluents with a direct potential to impact recipient water bodies through reuse of treated wastewater, a practice increasingly suggested as a way to address water scarcity in the EU and worldwide. Although currently disregarded, the release of MNPs into the aquatic environment may negatively impact aquatic ecosystems beyond the mere physical presence of the plastic particles. Freshwater and marine water contamination by MNPs emerges as a fundamental problem directly undermining the fulfilment of several Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This project proposes to address two unacknowledged ensuing threats related to the potential for these MNPs to (i) act as trojan horse for chemical additives and contaminants of emerging concern (CEC), and to (ii) act as trojan horse for antimicrobial resistance (AMR) genes into aquatic ecosystems through wastewater reuse applications. There is currently a limited understanding of the release of MNPs from urban wastewater treatment plants (UWTPs) into freshwaters and even less on the fate of chemical additives associated with these plastic particles. Most plastics are produced and filled with a variety of chemical additives with specific purposes (e.g. plasticisers, flame retardants or UV filters). The impact of these chemical additives in freshwaters is closely associated to the fate of the plastic particles and remains largely unknown. In addition, the characteristic high surface area-to-volume ratio of MNPs may add to their potential hazardous effects as persistent and toxic contaminants (CEC) present in wastewater effluents have been demonstrated to be adsorbed on these particles. Further, the spread of antibiotic-resistant pathogens and their traits has been recognised as a truly global challenge that needs to be addressed at a global scale. The aquatic environment including lakes, rivers, streams, and coastlines, receives effluents from UWTPs, runoff from agricultural activities, and other human inputs and may become reservoirs of antibiotic resistance possibly further eliciting the emergence and propagation of antibiotic-resistant bacteria (ARB). Since DNA is known to sorb to certain plastics, we postulate that MNPs may represent an emerging risk for transportation of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) acting as a trojan horse for the transmission of antibiotic resistance through horizontal gene transfer along wastewater fluxes and in the environment (aquatic ecosystems and soils through wastewater reuse). In the NANO-CARRIERS project, we propose through a series of laboratory experiments, field measurements and case studies to develop new understanding of the risk posed by the UWTPs-based emission of micro and particularly nano-sized plastic particles into aquatic ecosystems in the context of emission and spread of chemical additives, CEC and antibiotic resistance genes."

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